The left is turning a blind eye to acts of violence.
IN CANADA, WE’VE ALWAYS DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY, BASED ON PUBLIC REASONING AND POLITICAL CONSENSUS. — RUPA SUBRAMANYA
After the burning and vandalism of a spate of mostly Roman Catholic churches in recent weeks, one would think that a leader who professes to be progressive and supports freedom of religion would have denounced these criminal acts in no uncertain terms. At a press conference last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to condemn the attacks, but then added this caveat: “It’s real and it is fully understandable given the shameful history we are all becom(ing) more aware of.”
The message was clear: attacking churches is a bad thing to do, but it’s “understandable” given the tragic legacy of abuse in the mostly Catholic-run Indian residential schools.
Trudeau, being the consummate politician that he is, measured his words carefully. But far-left activists went much further. Reacting to a news story on Catholic churches in Canada, activist Harsha Walia tweeted, “Burn it all down.” She reportedly later recanted, claiming her tweet was “misquoted” and “taken out of context.”
Let’s play this back differently. Suppose a series of mosques had been attacked around the country and most of the perpetrators belonged to communities with a grievance against Islam, such as, for example, that their ancestors had been forcibly converted by the sword.
Would Trudeau and others have then said the acts were “understandable” given the context? You can be sure they would have been called out as Islamophobic and not excused because of the history of cultural genocide, against which the perpetrators were purportedly expressing their anguish.
For the progressive left, it appears that acts of violence may be condoned if the cause is one they consider just, but otherwise condemned.
How different is Trudeau’s prevarication about the attacks on Catholic churches from Hindu fundamentalists in India who in one breath condemn the 1992 destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu activists, and in a second breath excuse the action as “understandable,” given that the mosque stood on the ruins of a Hindu temple destroyed by an Islamic invader?
And where does this leave far-left activists calling for churches to be burned down? How different are they from the Hindu fundamentalists in India who want mosques to be demolished because they were erected by Islamic invaders in the Middle Ages?
A genuine liberal would speak out against all such cases of egregious violence, no matter the justification or the historical wrongs that prompted them. But the progressive left engages in selective condemnation, and this has a corrosive effect on our polity by promoting violence and undermining the rule of law.
But there is a more insidious explanation for why politicians and activists condone, tacitly or otherwise, certain instances of violence: such acts serve as a form of symbolic politics, also known as tokenism. After all, vandalizing churches is not going to do anything to efface the horrors of the residential schools system, nor does it do anything to advance the cause of Indigenous-canadians. In fact, many Indigenous leaders have condemned the church fires and distanced themselves from Walia and her ilk.
Part of the problem is that Canada seems to have imported its culture wars, and the way people fight them, from our neighbours to the south. Let’s not forget that the United States was born through revolution and reasserted its nationhood after a bloody civil war. In other words, violence is part of its history and permeates its cultural ethos, even today. Think about all the rightwing Americans who will take up arms for, well, the right to bear arms.
Canada, meanwhile, was born through political consensus, not violence, and our country came into being through an act of the British Parliament. For that matter, even Great Britain has seen its share of violent upheavals, including the killing of a king and a period of anti-monarchist republicanism, until the monarchy was eventually restored.
In Canada, we’ve always done things differently, based on public reasoning and political consensus. The downside is that our political institutions evolve slowly, which is why we haven’t yet evolved beyond a head of state who happens to be the queen of another country.
On the upside, Canada has avoided the kinds of upheavals that have befallen the U.S. through its long history, and this country has therefore always been a beacon of common sense and good will. Hopefully, before we get sucked into someone else’s definition of a culture war, we will remember this, take a step back and behave like Canadians, not wannabe Americans.